


Kinktober 2020

by LookingForDroids



Category: Hiveswap, Homestuck
Genre: Body Worship, Breathplay, Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, Exhibitionism, Ficlet Collection, Flushed Romance | Matesprits, Fucking Machines, Hate Sex, Human Furniture, Knifeplay, Mommykink, Multi, Orgasm Denial, POV Second Person, POV Third Person, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Petplay, Self-cest, Sensory Deprivation, Shower Sex, Tentacles, formal wear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:13:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 10,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27353278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LookingForDroids/pseuds/LookingForDroids
Summary: Oh, look, another ficlet collection.Some of these are smut with character study, some are just character study, and some are just smut. Most range from 300-500 words, and they hover around an M rating, with a few exceptions.Index page with links in the first chapter.
Relationships: Aradia Megido/Vriska Serket, Azdaja Knelax/Konyyl Okimaw, Folykl Darane/Marsti Houtek, Jade Harley/Feferi Peixes, June Egbert/Roxy Lalonde, Kanaya Maryam/Feferi Peixes, Karkat Vantas/Equius Zahhak, Mallek Adalov/Cirava Hermod, Mallek Adalov/Sollux Captor/Karkat Vantas, Rose Lalonde/Grimdark Rose, Rose Lalonde/Kanaya Maryam, Sollux Captor/Equius Zahhak, Terezi Pyrope/Vriska Serket, The Condesce/Meenah Peixes, The Disciple/The Signless | The Sufferer, The Handmaid/Other Megidos
Comments: 18
Kudos: 13





	1. Index

Chapter 1. [Knifeplay, Konyyl<>Azdaja, 413 words.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27353278/chapters/66837301#workskin) 3rd person POV. Rated T.

Chapter 2. [Human Furniture, Karkat/Equius, 200 words.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27353278/chapters/66837427#workskin) 3rd person POV.

Chapter 3. [Orgasm denial, Aradia<3<Vriska, 300 words.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27353278/chapters/66837553#workskin) 3rd person POV.

Chapter 4. [Breathplay, the Condesce<3<Meenah, 500 words.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27353278/chapters/66837670#workskin)2nd person POV. Rated T

Chapter 5. [Double penetration in two holes, Mallek<3<Sollux<3<Karkat, 222 words.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27353278/chapters/66837895#workskin) 2nd person POV.

Chapter 6. [Sensory deprivation, Roxy/June, 413 words.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27353278/chapters/66838012#workskin) 2nd person POV. Rated T

Chapter 7. [Tentacles, Jade/Feferi, 450 words.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27353278/chapters/66838087#workskin) 3rd person POV.

Chapter 8. [Selfcest, The Handmaid/Other Damaras + the Handmaid/Aradia, 600 words.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27353278/chapters/66838177#workskin) 2nd person POV.

Chapter 9. [Mommykink, Rose/Kanaya, 450 words.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27353278/chapters/66838279#workskin) 3rd person POV.

Chapter 10. [The Disciple<>The Signless, Foot Worship, 900 words.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27353278/chapters/66838369) 3rd person POV. Rated T

Chapter 11. [Body worship, Cirava/Mallek, 413 words.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27353278/chapters/66838426#workskin) 3rd person POV.

Chapter 12. [Collaring, June/Roxy, 150 words.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27353278/chapters/66838471#workskin) 3rd person POV. Rated T

Chapter 13. [Prostitution, Vriska/OFC, background one-sided Vriska/Terezi, 413 words.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27353278/chapters/66838768#workskin) 2nd person POV.

Chapter 14. [Fucking machines, Sollux<3<Equius, 1000 words.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27353278/chapters/66838960#workskin) 3rd person POV.

Chapter 15. [Petplay, June/Roxy, just over 950 words.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27353278/chapters/66839080#workskin) 2nd person POV.

Chapter 16. [Hate sex (and mirror sex, sort of), Rose<3<Grimdark Rose, 700 words.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27353278/chapters/66839149#workskin) 2nd person POV.

Chapter 17. [Exhibitionism/Voyeurism, Terezi<3<Vriska + background Vriska<3<Aradia, 300 words.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27353278/chapters/66839197#workskin) 2nd person POV.

Chapter 18. [Formal wear, Feferi<3<Kanaya, 413 words.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27353278/chapters/66839314#workskin) 3rd person POV.

Chapter 19. [Shower sex, Folykl/Marsti, 1000 words.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27353278/chapters/66839371#workskin) 2nd person POV.


	2. Knifeplay, Konyyl<>Azdaja

In the safehive after the job is over, Konyyl cleans her claws while Azdaja watches. She knows he doesn’t find the comedown any easier than she does, but there’s not much room for pacing in here and they can’t leave until the sky is clear of drones, so they’re stuck with repetitive motion: his foot tapping on the concrete floor, the swipe of bloodied cloth over sharp steel. He waits until she crumples that cloth and throws it against the wall with a huff of frustration, then reaches across the mealplank between them, his graspnubs closing around her wrist. Anyone else who tried that might lose a limb or an eye, but he fits comfortably into her space, and she allows him to lift her gloved frond and rest his face against the flat side of one blade.

“Do you have any idea how easily I could open your veins?” she asks. She’s expecting a boast in return – how simple it would be to throw her back in a bolt of psionic force, how even drones can’t touch him. That would lead things back to familiar ground.

“I trust you,” he says. Just that. The whole thing is weirdly pale, but she’s feeling weirdly pale. She wants to think of him as untouchable, but he isn’t; she intends to protect him, but there’s no doing that forever. All it would take is a twist of her wrist to lay him open to the bone, but that’s nothing new for them, and it doesn’t matter, because she won’t. She holds the flat of the claw to his skin, listening to his breathing even out, seeing the blush that colors his cheeks as she traces the smooth metal along the arc of his jaw in something like a caress. His eyes flicker, electric blue, the brightest thing in the dim block. Her steel reflects their light, and her bloodpusher aches with the kind of pity she has no name for.

A few moments longer, she waits, wondering if he’ll be the first to pull away. He isn’t. He gives her a smile, reckless and a little hungry; he’s the one with the plans, but she’s gotten good at knowing how to read him, and what that look means is that he wants to feel something. It doesn’t really matter what. 

She turns the claw inward and leaves her mark, too shallow to scar, deep enough to bleed.

He hadn’t said he trusted her not to.


	3. Human Furniture, Karkat/Equius

Equius can, if required, maintain the pose indefinitely.

The rug that Karkat laid out beneath him is not rich, but it is comfortable, to a far greater degree than the cold stone floors of his own hive. He could endure, if called to. The strain would be little enough. But Karkat believes and expressed at volume that discomfort should be deliberate, a consequence of some action – that in a resting state, one should be able to rest.

Above him, behind him, he hears the whir of a breeze blender, the sound of turning pages, the occasional clink of a spoon on the edge of a mug. He lets it slide by. When he thinks of the presence of Karkat’s crossed ankles on the small of his back, that slight but undeniable weight, perspiration beads on his skin; his bulge stirs in its sheath, pressing outwards, until he reins himself in. But he has not been asked for thought, and so it can be dispensed with, alongside the physicality of sweat and shame. His body was made to take weight, to hold position. All that is required of him is to exist in stillness: useful, unobtrusive, an object of pleasing design.


	4. Orgasm denial, Aradia<3<Vriska

“Time,” Aradia says, “is not a rigid plane. It can be crumpled, folded, stretched... like a sheet of fabric might be, I suppose, if that fabric existed simultaneously in multiple higher-order dimensions.”

She keeps Vriska bent beneath her as she talks, fucking her slowly, stroking her bulge with cerulean-slick fingers. There’s no need for psionics to hold her in place; by now, a steady grip is good enough.

“My point,” she adds, “is that it can be manipulated locally without compromising the whole.”

“I didn’t ask for a lecture,” Vriska snaps. She’s trying to sound cool, but her face is flushed a delicate blue and her hips work frantically, pushing forward into Aradia’s hand with no rhythm to speak of. It isn’t true that it won’t do her any good, but – not yet.

Aradia tangles her other hand in the sweaty mess of Vriska’s hair and pulls her head back sharply, leaning forward enough to nip at the bared skin of her throat and murmur, “Is there anything you _would_ like to ask for?”

Vriska’s bulge lashes wildly, twisting in Aradia’s hand. A high whine slips from her clenched teeth. She’s getting desperate, but between one ragged, panting breath and the next, she manages a snarled _Go fuck yourself._ Aradia lets the obvious joke fall unused.

“Suit yourself,” she says sweetly, and instead of pulling out, she rocks forward and buries herself fully in Vriska’s cool, clenching nook, spinning time as she does. It’s enough to make her catch her own breath, but she doesn’t bother hiding her reaction. Theres’s no reason why she would, and even if she’s almost ready to come herself, that’s hardly a problem. _Not yet_ can last a very long time, relatively speaking. She means to make sure Vriska feels every last microsecond of it.


	5. Breathplay, the Condesce<3<Meenah

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How are Condy and Meenah alive and in the same timeline together? We’re not worrying about that right now.

The gill’s the same age you were when you took the throne, and she’s got the same face. Same royal blood, too, same refusal to submit, and that might not make her smart, but it makes her admiralble. Beta than the floundering Heiresses you spent the last ten thousand sweeps skewering, at least. They were embarrassments. This one, you liked enough to decide that you krilled her too quickly.

So now you’ve got her pinned to the bulkhead, the haft of your 2x3dent pressing into her pretty chitinous wind column and the blood of her resurrection still painting your mouth, and you’re working on doing it again. Her walkstubs are braced against the wall, and she grips the 2x3dent in her sharp gold-tipped claws, trying to force it back. She’s Tyrian strong. You’ve got weight and age and leverage, and holding her down is a fine kind of strain, but that doesn’t change the fact that she’s glubbing _held_. Not broken yet, though. Not done kicking, though her eyes are wide with terror and her gills flare, fuchsia-tinged, useless outside of water. It takes a long time to cull a seadweller through oxygen deprivation, and longer still when you keep giving her chances to steal whatever breath she can.

“Got more fight in you than my Helmsman does,” you say, and the shallow little _hah_ sound she makes is almost a laugh, almost like she thinks that’s funny. Yeah, you like this one. She looks like she’s got somefin to say, too, and you’ve been bored for so long, without anyfin around worth the time it takes to break it, that you actually want to hear whatever bullfish she plans to sell you. You relax your hold on the 2x3dent just enough to let her speak. She drags in a desperate breath, then another, and gasps, “More fight... than you know...”

Shell yes. _That’s_ the kinda shit you like to hear from a challenger, and you’re feeling just magnanimous enough to reward it. You let her breathe almost freely for a little longer, pin her down with your body instead. Her legs wrap around your waist, and as she arches up to meet you, seeming almost as desperate for contact as she is for air, it doesn’t take you long to realize that the crazy beach is grinning. She lets go of the 2x3dent to rake her claws down your back, and between the lithe line of her body pressed against yours and the weird fucking thrill of your own defiant eyes staring back from a younger face, you almost don’t notice when warning lights start to flicker on and then die at the periphery of your vision. 

“Ain’t talkin’ aboat _me_ ,” she says. “Sup, Tuna?” And then she is laughing, her hips rolling against yours as the whole bridge goes dark. You slam your 2x3dent back down hard enough to crack the chitin plates of her throat, but not before she gets the words out.

“I jacked your ship, beach.”


	6. Double penetration in two holes, Mallek<3<Sollux<3<Karkat

Captor’s back is arched, his shades askew, and it’s no surprise he’s gotten started without you. The troll fucking him is... not burgundy. You knew to expect that, and you can be cool. You nod, ignoring the urge to salute, and General Vantas himself gives you a scowl that doesn’t match his crimson blush. The curl of his claws around Captor’s angular hips is almost protective, but the scratches parallel to those spinal ports are all pitch.

“Adalov, this is Karkat,” Captor says, like anybody here hasn’t heard of Vantas. “You’ll get along. Neither of you can code worth shit.”

That stings, because he _is_ better, but only slightly, because you’re good and he knows it. 

“His mouth is unoccupied, if you want to shut him up,” Vantas says, meeting your eyes; it’s not a bad idea. You step forward, working open your uniform until your bulge is free to uncurl into open air.

Captor’s teeth are sharp, but you like sharp. You like the way he pushes back against Vantas as you slide past their points, legs spread wide for that rippling bulge, red to your blue. Of course that’s what this is, but you don’t mind. Let him have his symmetry. You’ve got his hot mouth, both fangs and forked tongue, and the balance of his hate and his respect.


	7. Sensory deprivation, Roxy/June

It’s dark, outside the ambient light of this new world’s cities, and even darker with a rogue’s bandana wrapped twice around your eyes.

You’re standing on soft earth, grass brushing your ankles, but when you stretch out your arms, there’s only emptiness. No crickets chirp. No engine noises carry from a distant highway. There’s a stillness in the air so complete that no sound reaches you, and a feeling like nothing exists or could exist outside your body. Even your breathing feels subdued – and then a breath of wind stirs, fainter than a whisper but striking after so much absence. You lift your face to it, and smell pine needles, not ocean.

Three things in the world, then: earth, and you, and wind. A lonely wind, at first, and gentle, at home in the void you’ve invited. Then other, stronger breezes rise, brisk and cool, riffling through your hair and tugging at the hem of your shirt.

You’re feeling a little wild – wild enough to wrestle that shirt up over your head, open your hands and let the wind carry it off to who knows where. You stretch your arms up to the night, arching your back, feeling little gusts of air tickle your ribs and caress the bare underside of your breasts. You twirl, and the wind twirls with you; you laugh, and the wind lifts you, playing lightly over your skin. Your feet leave the ground, and even in darkness, it doesn’t feel like falling. The crickets and the highway return. The wind unknots your blindfold, steals that away too, but you don’t need it any longer.

When you open your eyes, it’s not to the cries of gulls and the expanse of ocean, or the solitude of a dead world in a dead session, but to June hanging in the air in front of you, her windswept hair, her doofy smile. She’s holding onto your shirt and your bandana, but even if she lets them go, they won’t be lost.

You could fly if you wanted, but you let the wind carry you, spinning you like a dance partner until June catches you in her open arms. Her warm hands settle on your back, and her god tier PJs are soft against your skin.

“Hi,” she says, and boops her nose against yours. 

“Sup,” you say, remembering the sight of her after everything ended. She tastes like rain when you kiss her.

In your dreams that night, there are fireflies.


	8. Tentacles, Jade/Feferi

Jade thought she knew what to expect, with trolls. 

There are books, with diagrams, and Rose with hands-on experience and verbose precision, and all of them told her to anticipate a single tentacle, long and flexible, more independent-minded than the comparable human anatomy. But when she looks down below the clear surface of the water, past the round swell of Feferi’s belly to the apex of her parted thighs, she finds herself faced with a plurality of them. They’re delicate, translucent things, fuchsia-hued and arrayed in radial symmetry: five big ones, like the points of a sea star, and lots of little ones, like the tendrils of a sea anemone sifting the water for prey. They look fragile, but lots of things look fragile that aren’t. 

“Can I...?” she asks, but she scarcely needs to reach closer before they grasp her wrist, whip-quick, and pull her towards the center. Like an anemone’s tendrils, they’re not slick, just cool and slightly sticky, strong enough that it might take some doing to extricate herself if she wants to. She doesn’t. She lets herself be drawn in, until she’s close enough to curl her fingers up into the rippling softness of Feferi’s nook. She’s careful with her claws – more careful, knowing trolls, than she needs to be, but Jade is used to being mostly human, and she likes to do things in ways that mostly don’t hurt. 

It must be the right choice, or at least not the wrong one, because Feferi gasps, gills fluttering at her throat and along her sides. She rolls her hips against the heel of Jade’s hand with a sigh, but though her tendrils coil and flex with rhythmic intent, her luminous eyes are steady on Jade’s face, and she is very far from gone.

“Can _I_?” she asks curiously, slipping a hand between Jade’s legs. “Let me know if I can’t.”

“No complaints here,” Jade says, voice catching. “Keep doing that. I mean, unless...”

“Unless?” Feferi asks, leaning close and grinning, and oh no. She’s blushing. It really is something she should be able to just say, but she has to look away and mutter, “I kind of want to know what those feel like inside me.”

Her arm is abruptly released, and Feferi presses up against her in a surge of water, legs wrapping around her hips. Tendrils grip her legs, trail over her stomach; the smaller ones tickle her inner thighs as one of the big ones wriggles into her, leaving her caught between breathlessness and laughter. Then Feferi falls backward, carrying Jade with her into deeper water.

That’s OK, though. She doesn’t need to worry about swimming. She’s got someone to hold her up.


	9. Selfcest, The Handmaid/Other Damaras + the Handmaid/Aradia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five times the Handmaid decided to go fuck herself, and one time she didn’t. (5+1 drabbles)

1\. The Original

There‘s the one who bears the name that was taken from you: white ghost eyes, snarling mouth, claws sharp enough to leave scratches down your back. She thinks she’s angry? You’d bet she never had her breathing privileges revoked. You dig your thumbs into her phantom throat and show her what it’s like, and she comes like that, desperate and shaking, riding you through it and cursing you after.

Still, you don’t hate her, though you think she might hate you. Her life was prettier than yours, but you’re not too stupid to recognize a cage when you see it.

2\. The Machine

Then there’s the one with less of a name than you have. Her meteor made it to Alternia. It wasn’t kindness that awaited her.

You find her by chance, stepping sideways from one battle into another, and when she tells you what she’ll do if you don’t fuck off, you stay and let her. You twist in her cables, legs spread, laughter in your ears and plasma fire shuddering through her hull, and after you spill your slurry on the helmsblock floor, she asks for one thing.

You drive your needles through her eyes and vanish as the shields fall.

3\. The Empress

She’s older than any rustblood should be, tempered by cruelty endured and dealt back double, and not even Death’s Handmaid frightens her. Her hair is a grey cascade of tangles, her eyes a dull undying fire. She kneels for no one, but she kneels for you.

“They all say I sucked the Demoness’s bulge to earn my throne,” she says with a withered laugh, “unless they think I’m the Demoness herself.”

She hooks a claw into your dress and _tears_ , then grins up with teeth sharp enough to leave you shivering with anticipated pain.

“Might as well make it true.”

4\. The Rogue

You don’t know what she did differently that night. Another turn, maybe. A patch of void. Maybe she was just _better_. But she’s been running ever since, hiding in the gaps between seconds, and in this universe, stories say the Demoness is the only one who dares defy the Lord of Time.

You’d hate her, if only you could. But she cares enough to bring you here, to this hollow in the fabric of the multiverse, and you can’t turn away from it: her hand wrapped around your bulge, her mouth hot against your thigh, this shared and stolen time.

5\. The Memory

You find her in a solitary place, bathed in green light, shoulders shaking; it’s no refuge, this home, but she still returns too often. You can’t remember what left her weeping this time, but she’s young enough to freeze in fear when you sit beside her.

You remember this: being young, spending your rage on another’s body, your tearstained face buried in her shoulder as she takes you inside her. You remember that long ago, out of some desiccated impulse toward kindness, someone showed you that not everything had to hurt.

Despite everything, your first kiss is a gentle one.

+1. The Psychopomp

The one who finds you after your corpse hits the Battleship Condescension’s deck isn’t any universe’s you. She’s younger, kinder. Her hair curls more and her eyes aren’t leashed fire. She isn’t trapped. 

She takes your hand, and too slowly, realization hits: neither are you.

You make a suggestion, crude, for old time’s sake. Her lips curl up, and she says there’s time enough, if you’re serious.

She digs her claws into you in a supernova’s heart, the kind of fire you always wanted to see; you come surrounded by heat, eyes closed, trembling.

Your last kiss is gentle too.


	10. Mommykink, Rose/Kanaya

On occasion, Rose wonders what it means for the troll psyche that those who bring them into the world are also – in extremis, wounded beyond repair – those who prey upon them. 

She rests on Kanaya’s chest in the aftermath of their exertions, palm splayed over rough skin once pierced by light and healed poorly; Kanaya’s lips press against her forehead, a kiss with hidden fangs, and despite the thrill of guilt, it strikes her that though the concept of family diverges, the archetype of the Devouring Mother translates well. 

But that’s an old question, a fear ancient as childhood itself: what happens when the raiment of love or duty slips loose, and what you’re left with is a creature of needs and broken edges, no less hungry than yourself?

Kanaya stirs, murmuring something soft and sleepy into Rose’s hair; Rose turns instinctively in her arms, allows herself to be held.

.

What she would say, if she could find the courage to express it without a proliferation of metaphors arranged in sequence from least to most Freudian, is that she desires care without effusion. Marital bliss is well enough, but too much sugar turns overfamiliar and cloying. She needs a bit of sting with her sweetness.

It’s not impossible that Kanaya understands without being told. She knows well enough, at least, how to make Rose shiver: that sharp, controlled downswing, the palm resting on Rose’s ass, over her cotton panties. The cool clarity in her voice as she says, “You will not, I anticipate, consider such foolishness again?”

“No, m–” Rose says. “No ma’am.”

“What was that?” Kanaya asks, shifting Rose’s legs apart and tapping a finger lightly against her clit. Rose says the word with eyes closed and face burning, and all the aching tightness in her stomach abruptly uncoils.

.

What she will never say, for fear of being misunderstood or understood too well, is this: 

She treasures each cup of tea placed wordlessly by her bedside, each sprig of jasmine or lavender left on their sunlit table, the verdant smell of new life that clings to Kanaya’s hands when she comes in from the garden. She goes hot inside at the memory of her head cradled in Kanaya’s lap, that silken skirt rumpled and disarrayed beneath her cheek and the cool sinuousness of a bulge curling and uncurling against her tongue. That night, Kanaya cupped Rose’s face with clawed fingers and told her how good she was, how skilled, how loved; she stroked Rose’s hair as she came and kissed her carefully after, drawing no blood, causing no pain. Rose won’t forget that. It settled inside her like light.

But what she craves is the absolute honesty of teeth.


	11. Foot Worship, The Disciple<>The Signless

The night is hot and still. The Disciple paces the tile path surrounding an outdoor ablution pool, every breath she takes fragrant with fruit trees and unfamiliar blossoms. The Signless sits on a reclining platform beside the gently rippling water, unclothed and scrubbed free of dust and sweat, his hair slowly drying to a fluffy cloud. Her gaze keeps wandering back in his direction. She’d wrap herself around him if she could, drape herself over his stocky frame or curl up in his lap, but she can’t make herself stay still. Her thoughts chase each other like hunting barkfiends, swift and noisy, close on each others’ heels: they’re safe for now. They aren’t in chains. The highblood hiding them – the Polymath to strangers and soldiers, Xigisi among friends – spent the evening listening to Signless preach, and argued constantly but didn’t laugh once. She can’t let her guard down yet. He keeps a tall and vaulted bookhive, filled with more books than she’d before imagined. She doesn’t trust him. He offered them a feast while trolls outside his gated walls are starving. He offered himself for Porrim’s appetites, instead of his servants. He offered Signless a chance to rest.

It always comes back to that, in the end. They’d spent so long on the run after that last town called in the drones, hiding in inhospitable country, worn down by failure and hunger. Now, the Signless’s shoulders are loose with exhausted contentment, and the chitin plates of his abdomen gleam in the soft outdoor lighting as he shifts and stretches. He says her name, holds out a frond to her, and she hesitates. This place is too calm, too soft with luxury. She keeps listening for Imperial boots rising over the lilt of birdsong and the splash of fountains – but there are no boots, no energy bolts, no sound of drones approaching. She crosses back towards the pool. She folds herself down beside him on the tiled ground and kisses his knee, and his eyebrows lift in a question.

“I’m in a pale mood,” she says, “but if you’d rather...”

“No,” he says. “Fuck, no, I wouldn’t rather. Pale is...” He trails off, brushing her face with his fingertips, blushing hot and crimson. She’ll tear out the throat of anyone who dares hurt him for that, but there are no enemies to distract her from the fact that even clean, even rested, he’s thinner than he should be. Scars and fractures stand out against the layered armor of his skin, fresh and fading. He’s too open to the world, too vulnerable for words. She runs a frond down his lower leg, feeling the carapace rough against her skin, until she reaches his ankle and lifts his strut pod, holding the arch of it in one palm and the heel in the other. There are scars there too, and bones misaligned from an old break, courtesy of a stint in Imperial custody. She knows it hurts him sometimes, but she also knows how not to hurt him now. His talons flex beneath her touch, and his startled laugh turns into a startled sigh as she presses the pads of her fingers into the sole, rubbing slow circles into skin made tough and calloused by a lifetime spent traveling. She’d draw the aches from his feet with scented oils if she had them, but all she has is her thumbs and her awareness of muscle and nerve. Still, there’s something like ceremony here, a reverence that settles on her, washing the violence from her mind. He touches her hair, and her breathing slows, and the garden is only peaceful. She presses her brow to the top of his foot, and then her lips, kissing clean unarmored skin in a line from the top of his ankle to his toes. He shivers beneath her touch, and – 

“Don’t do that,” he says, his voice gone tight and strange. “Fuck. Don’t. Dis, Meulin, that isn’t – ”

The name of her wigglerhood is strange too, sweeps after she left it behind her, but she knows what he’s trying to hold onto. It’s hard to listen to his visions and not fall into them, but reverence was never what he wanted. It scares him. She needs to fix this.

“Furgive me,” she says, with a flash of fangs, “but I couldn’t help meowself. It’s hardly my fault you’re more pitiable than I’ve ever seen you.”

When she stands, she’s tall enough to loom and strong enough to lift him easily, and he lets her, uncertain of her game. 

“I can’t help this either,” she says, and bends to kiss him on the mouth, fierce and flushed, with teeth and tongue – then tosses him into the ablution pool. 

He clambers out sputtering and cursing, shaking water from his now-drenched hair, just in time for her to tackle him back in. A sacrifice. She hates being submerged in water, but she likes the way he twists in her arms when she grapples him, trying to kick loose, surprised again into laughter. She holds him close enough, knows him well enough, to know he’s worthy of what he doesn’t want; if he let her, she would press her mouth to every injured part of him, and not lose sight of who he is. If he ever asked for ceremony – but he doesn’t. He won’t.

She’ll just have to tickle him mercilessly instead.


	12. Body worship, Cirava/Mallek

The thing about Mallek, Cirava knows, is that bodies are his art, like soundscapes are theirs, and you don’t stop thinking about art. That’s as true of him as it is of them, and when his gaze goes distant – when he runs his cool hands over their back and shoulders as they ride him, like he’s tracing something there – they don’t need to wonder what kind of potential he sees. His fingers drift across their skin, and they push back into his touch, thinking of patterns taking form.

“If you could do whatever to me,” they ask, “what would you do?”

The ambiguity is deliberate. They kind of want to know what he’ll take from what they’ve given him. Any kind of answer. Pierced horns, pierced tongue, his ink on their skin. Whatever it is, they’ll learn something. He goes silent for a second, then catches their hands in his and brings them to his mouth.

“Pity,” he says, brushing each knuckle with his thumb and then his lips. “And Hate.”

His breath is a ghost on their skin. They laugh, rocking down against him, and he moves for a moment without thought, head tilted back. It takes him time to regain composure.

“A crude symbolic representation of a bloodpusher,” he says, his fingers curling tight around their skinny bicep. “Here. I’d put a ribbon saying _Mom_ beneath it and a mean looking wasp above.”

“Dude, I’m serious, lmao,” Cirava says. “What would you really do?”

Mallek’s eyes close – in thought, this time, though his lips are still parted and his breath still comes quickly.

“Something abstract,” he says, running his palms down to their wrists and up again to their shoulders. “Black background, bright patterns. Something loose and spiraling. And here – ”

His fingertips brush the nape of their neck and travel down their spine, tracing what it takes them too long to realize is a frequency. Their breath catches. Their thorax feels tight and electric, and only half of that is down to the pulse and undulation of his bulge inside them.

“A spectrogram,” he says, “Soundwaves layered over soundwaves.” His voice is quiet enough now that Cirava knows he’s thought about it before, and this is what he decided: not lightning or circuitry, something to match their scars or their fears. Not even scars or fears made beautiful. Just sound. Music. That’s the thing he sees when he looks at them; in his eyes, beneath his hands, that’s what they are.


	13. Collaring, June/Roxy

June’s hands are deft when she buckles the collar around Roxy’s throat, like she knows every step of how this goes; to Roxy, it’s new enough to feel a little dangerous. All she had before was the theory. Now, she lifts a hand to the collar, learning weight and texture: soft leather the color of a summer sky, comfortably snug but not at all restrictive. It almost seems like she can breathe easier with it on. Her fingers brush the place where a tag would hang if she were somebody’s cat, and – this isn’t about ownership, but she imagines herself curled on a cushion by a fireplace, haughty yet pampered, with June’s fingers running through her hair.

“If lost, return to June Egbert,” she says. A little breeze flits around her, teasing, and June’s warm arms encircle her from behind.

“I know you won’t get lost,” she says. “But yeah.”


	14. Prostitution, Vriska/OFC, background one-sided Vriska/Terezi

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is intended to take place at least 1.5ish sweeps after the revenge cycle, though I realize that’s not immediately clear.

Your first time is something less like rebellion than an animal flinging itself against the bars of a cage. 

You don’t need to do it. You’re not some hiveless orphan struggling to survive. There’s no reason why you decide to pull on a tight black skirt as soon as you’re done washing tonight’s blood off your hands, and no reason why you tug it up a little higher than it needs to go, staring at yourself in the mirror and wondering what Mindfang would think of you. But you’re bored and agitated, restless from the dry heat in the air, and you need to do something to get rid of this unsettled feeling. Mostly, you just want to find out whether it’s true that idiots will line up to pay for something they don’t even want when it’s being given away for free.

It’s a curiosity that settles under your skin, and it leads you to a club with a name you don’t care about: loud music, overpriced food, clientele cerulean and up. Some lowblood haunt would be safer, but fuck safety. Fuck it. There’s a violetblood here with an executioner’s smile, and she’s watching the crowd like she’s looking to get laid. You catch her attention, and then you look her in the eye as you name your price.

She takes you in the alley out back with your skirt rucked up around your waist, your face pressed against rough brick and her hips pressed against your ass as her bulge slides up into you, and it’s almost enough. Not quite. She’s taller than you, and her claws are sharp against your abdomen, but she’s also colder than you, and too quiet. Whatever you were looking for, it’s not this. But it’s better than nothing, and you push back to meet her as she moves inside you, breathing through clenched teeth, feeling like you’re strung up on live wires. You seize her mind when she’s close, just to see if you can, and push her that extra distance over the edge. She muffles her moan with her teeth in your shoulder, and her whole body goes taut and then loose against you as she comes and comes, not even realizing it’s at your command.

You finish after she’s gone, leaning against the wall with your good eye closed and your metal hand working your bulge, thinking of pain and teeth, enough rope to hang yourself, what you’re owed and what you deserve.


	15. Fucking machines, Sollux<3<Equius

Sollux isn’t calm. He’s coasting on the brittle clarity of no sleep and too much coffee, and he’s not sure he’s ready for this, but he’s not going to let it show. He paces the length of the block, his arms folded behind his back like a strict instructorturer and his footsteps measured. He takes his time. Equius isn’t going to be moving anytime soon. 

“When you’ve got a machine that’s built for a particular purpose,” he says as he walks, “it doesn’t matter how good the design looks on condensed tree pulp, and it doesn’t matter how sturdy the materials are. It’s still gotta be stress tested.”

He stops in front of a control console, lets his claws click over the surface of the keyboard loudly enough to be heard on the opposite site of the block, and says, “Do you agree, Engineer Zahhak?”

The title drops into the silence with an ease that doesn’t quite surprise him. It’s not one he’s ever used for Equius before, but this is different, and the formalities are part of it. Equius might be the one immobilized, supported by a mesh of cable, organic wire and psionic restraints, but he’s wearing his work clothes – the top half of them, at least, and, for some reason, those stupid stripey stockings. Sollux considered having him dig out his old Imperial uniform instead, but if he’s going to be in control of this, he needs to stay in control. The dark, hemonymous blue-grays of Karkat’s troops, he can manage.

He waits, counts down – still no answer. When he turns back, Equius’s eyes are closed, and he’s biting his lip, trying to regulate his breathing. Sollux stops in front of him, a few paces away, and lifts his chin with a small expenditure of psionic force.

“I said do you agree?”

“I would agree with that, yes,” Equius says stiffly, like his face isn’t flushed the same shade of indigo as he’s currently dripping all over the floor of his respiteblock. Like he hadn’t asked for this.

“And are you aware of what your purpose is?”

“Within the confines of this block – ”

Wrong answer. Sollux gives him a short, sharp shock through the wires. He jerks in his harness, straining against unbreakable shackles, and comes to rest, breathing harder.

“Yes,” he manages. “I understand my purpose. Sir.”

“Good,” Sollux says. “I’ll start you off easy. Test one. I know you can handle this.”

He turns to the control console, flips a sequence of switches, and the device hums to life.

Verisimilitude aside, the thing isn’t what it looks like. That’s primarily because there’s no fucking reason to make it what it looks like when it’s only ever going to be used on Equius, and secondarily because the standard model wasn’t built with this one’s capabilities. Sollux types a command. Wires shift and rearrange, manipulating Equius’s limbs for greater access: hips canted forward, legs spread apart. As they move, a cable lifts from the coiled mass at the mechanism’s base, weaving through the air. This one’s got sensors and algorithms that make it almost as good at doing what it was made for as a living bulge, and though he could guide it with precision, he lets it find its way. It does, eventually. Equius barely makes a sound when it nudges at the entrance to his nook, though he exhales sharply when it works its way inside.

“Test one commencing,” Sollux says, adjusting the speed slowly. His mouth is dry. He can feel one of his bulges brushing against the front of his boxers, dragging over the soft cloth. He usually hates his own voice, because he sounds like a lisping idiot, but right now, he sounds like a technician. A lisping idiot technician, but the one who’s got his fronds on the controls. It’s a hot, dark feeling, and not a clean one. “The device displays expected response to mechanical stimulation in the lower range of intensity.”

Equius twitches in his wires, reacting as much to the words as to the rolling motion of the thing inside him. Sollux gives him time to adjust, then slowly ups the machine’s pace. Equius rides with it, moving within the limits his restraints allow. Sweat stands out on his upper thighs and the vulnerable places of his abdomen, all those breaks in his armor, but there’s a weird tranquility in his face, even after a second cable twines around the first, like he could do this for as long as he needs to. Good. It’s not exactly his decision.

“The device displays better than average response to the upper range of intensity.”

No reaction, this time. Equius’s eyes are blank and glazed; his body oscillates between tension and motion. He’s not incoherent yet. Sollux steps closer, looks up, appraising him with professional disinterest.

“You want down from there, Engineer?”

“I,” Equius says, voice faltering as a cable twists. The Empire would punish him for nonresponse, but he can’t help it; instead of another shock, Sollux gives him time.

“I accept my purpose,” he gasps. “I am – ” 

He bucks and arches, shuddering, and before he falls back, Sollux can hear the word _honored_ somewhere in the ragged upswing of that voice.

“As you should be,” Sollux says – quiet, clipped, controlled. His nerves buzz with caffeine and arousal. His nook aches. He looks at Equius hanging in his wires and feels the unexpected urge to touch him, not with claws but in comfort. He reels it in. If not for the psionics holding Equius in place, he’d have torn free already, but not on purpose and not out of panic. This isn’t over yet.

Biowires are meant to transmit a psionic current. Equius doesn’t have more than a trickle of that to give, but Sollux has never met anyone better than he is at taking. He lets his hand hover over the controls, waits until Equius is clear-headed enough to recognize that something is about to happen.

“Test two commencing.”


	16. Petplay, June/Roxy

One thing you’ve learned about cats is that they do like attention. They’re just shy sometimes! Looking at them too directly scares them off – and you get that, because sometimes it feels weird to have other people’s eyes on you – but they like to exist in your space. And if you do something else, like watching one of Karkat’s cinematic masterpieces, and keep still, and don’t pay attention except out of the corner of your eye – 

Roxy bumps her head against your arm, just a gentle nudge and a questioning sound. Cats don’t make any human-audible noise at all unless they learn to from humans – you read that, at some point, and it stuck with you – and Roxy was a quiet kitty for a long time. Now she talks as much as a cat as she ever did as a human with a key board, and that’s more fun because you don’t spend as much time wondering whether you’re doing something wrong. Her hair is soft, and you like the way it feels underneath your fingers. You like just having her close. 

“You’re a kitty!” you say, because it turns out XKCD‘s laws hold constant in every universe. “Hiya, cat! Do you want to watch Troll Twilight with me?”

The official title is In Which A Bronzeblooded Adolescent Is Ordered To Report For Military Training In A New Town, Whereupon She Encounters A Mysterious Group Of Jadebloods, Featuring Scintillation, A Sturdy Scuttlebuggy, Rainbow Drinker Sporting Events, Several Murder Attempts, An Unexpected Bout of Lycantrollpy, A Political Struggle Between Jadeblood Clans, A Matespritship Triangle Ultimately Resolved By Quadrant Vacillation, Et Cetera, but it’s Troll Twilight. Roxy has theories on why there’s so much cross universal congruence, which she’ll talk your ear off about when she’s not being a cat, but being a cat is exactly what she’s doing right now, so instead of speculating on why Troll Kristen Stewart gets to have more than six letters in her name, you reach across to skritch her behind the ears. She stills beneath your touch, then pushes back into it, rubbing her cheek against your palm. She can’t actually purr, but that’s fine, she’s the best cat anyway. Your best cat. She makes a cute little noise which is _kind of_ a meow, and giggles when you meow back.

You like the way her hair feels between your fingers too, and the weight of her head when she rests on your leg and shifts around to get comfortable, curling her knees up to her chest. You stroke her head, paying special attention to her ears and the place at the nape of her neck where lightly curling hair meets warm skin, and slightly less attention to Bellaa Sawane learning to play troll vampire base ball on screen. It really is kind of crazy how that works, and you spend some time wondering about it, before Roxy distracts you nipping at your skin through the fabric of your suit. She nuzzles your thigh, close and getting closer to regions still only minimally explored, and oh, ok. This is a thing that’s happening.

You’re not objecting. You’re really, really not objecting. Which doesn’t mean you’re not nervous, because even though you’ve gotten pretty well acquainted with Roxy’s strap on before, this feels more personal in a way that’s hard to articulate, except that there’s no barrier between you and your body, and that’s still not a thing you’re used to. But cats and Roxies don’t care about any of that, and in a weird way, that makes it easier for you to not care either. And the fluttery, unsettled lurch in your stomach when she rubs her face against your leg is not _just_ , or even mostly, nervousness. It feels a little bit like flying into a storm and knowing it isn’t dangerous, even with the lightning prickling on your skin and sparking off your hair. Roxy looks up at you and makes a questioning _mrow_ sound, and you grin down at her.

“If there is one thing that we humans, of which there is definitely only one in the room, have known since time immemorial,” you say, “it’s that we do not stop our feline overlords from going where they want and doing what they want. That’s just fact.”

She bumps you with her head again, giving you a smile that falls somewhere in the unclaimed emotional territory between bashful and satisfied, and that’s as good a confirmation as any that the page you’re on is the same one. You undo your trousers yourself – cats don’t have fingers, not even the best and smartest ones – and rearrange things until the current plan is possible. You can feel yourself blushing, and then you can feel Roxy’s skin and the brush of her breath as she nuzzles you with no cloth in the way, and that’s – it’s good. You like the way it feels, and there’s no need to think too much about it. Her tongue is a soft human tongue, and her teeth are a little bit sharp in a way that’s not bad, and you feel like if you’re not careful, you might just float away, except that you’ve got her here to ground you. 

You lean back and breathe out, bringing one of your hands back to Roxy’s hair and stroking her back with the other, and you let her explore like the curious kitty she is. Her mouth is warm and wet on your skin, leaving a trail of coolness. Something light and electric has settled in your chest. This is unfamiliar territory, but you think you can learn to feel at home here.


	17. Hate sex, Rose/Grimdark Rose

You’re dreaming.

You know this is a dream, because the sky is a chessboard and the ground is a flat silver plane riddled with cracks, and because the one you’re facing is – 

You might have been her, in some other timeline, but she isn’t you. Her eyes are white, when she turns to look at you, and her skin is the color of an oil slick on asphalt, shimmering rainbow-slick. You never did burn through all your anger, but in her, rage seethes like the stormcloud she’s wreathed in. The part of your mind attuned to Light can see how she’s unleashed it – on broken-towered castles, on roads and rivers, on the unraveling code of the session itself – and at the edges of the tessellated sky, you can feel the shell of this bubble starting to crack apart.

Because it’s a dream, you know that when it happens, you’ll wake unharmed; because it’s _your_ dream, you could disassemble her atom by atom. You’re not sure why you don’t, when you’ve never shied from self-destruction. Maybe it’s only that you’ve learned from the trolls what it means to hate something so much, or pity it so much, that you refuse to put an end to it or leave it alone. 

You lift your chin in a challenge, and meet her on her own ground. She comes at you with needles whirling, spinning skeins of smoke and ink with their points. You remember how that darkness felt, clinging to your skin and the inside of your mouth, and the frozen flood of power you welcomed in. Not your power. You were only ever a conduit, like you’re only a conduit for godhood now, but you’re not too proud to use it. She lifts her arms like a conductor preparing for the final movement – _always so dramatic, weren’t you?_ – and you slam her down to the mirrored ground.

A snarl wracks her face. She drops her needles – they boil away into wisps of nothing – and grabs your arms, trying to pull you closer. Her fingernails bite into your skin. They’re not claws, but she knows how to use them to hurt.

There’s a stillness that lasts a heartbeat, almost two. Then she surges up, her legs wrapping around your waist as cords of shadow drag you down. Her hands are desperate on your shoulders, her thighs tight around your waist, and you wonder how long she’s been here, in this session gone glitched out and wrong. Years, you think. As long as you’ve been free of it. When you look past her prone form, you can see yourself reflected in the ground beneath her: you in your god clothes and her in her rags, her violence and your clarity painted across the same round face. In the flickering radiance of a dead session, the Light in your eyes looks almost like the white ice in hers. Darkness probes beneath your Seer’s skirt, old familiar power buzzing against your skin, brushing the back of your knees and the inside of your thighs; a tendril of it slides against your underwear, then pushes beneath, unfurling into you as her lips part – and so do yours, you see reflected – in something like pleasure.

This fragment of you is brittle, though she’s still got strength enough to twist her fingers in your hair and hiss a curse you almost understand. It would be so easy to unmake her. But you open your mouth to hers instead, tasting oil as your tongue slips past her teeth and her cold breath slips into your lungs. It hurts a little, and you want more of it, but you know better. Nothing is ever entirely free of its history. You’ve still got a sliver of the Furthest Ring buried close to your heart, and it pulses in time with the darkness around and inside you. 

You’re dreaming, and the dream can’t last, but you’ve never been good at letting go. The fractures on the horizon widen. The sky bleeds light. You run your hands up beneath the tatters of a white shirt, feeling her ribs beneath her skin, looking for that sharp little glinting shard of what used to be you.


	18. Exhibitionism/Voyeurism, Terezi<3<Vriska + background Vriska<3<Aradia

There are claw marks on Vriska’s back.

She strides across the block amid eddies of color – the crisp vanilla of her ruffled shirt, the licorice of her boots, the subtler layers of scent that surround her. All the while, she’s bleeding beneath her pirate coat, and you know she knows you know.

Before she can close the distance, you stop her with the head of your cane beneath her chin; it makes no difference to your perceptions, but you tilt your head up towards her, grinning with all your teeth. You breathe in: blueberry, strong enough to flood your senses. Scratches up and down her arms, vividly fresh. A tantalizing hint of dark wine and cinnamon. She tosses a datastick on your desk, and you ignore it, though you won’t ignore it once she’s gone. Her information is good when it can be trusted, which is less often than you’d like and more often than you’d expect. This time, she doesn’t reek of perfidy, and not only because your whole block smells of her blood and her liaisons.

She doesn’t want to be your agent. It’s still as close as she can get to being yours.

“Payment,” you say, relishing the word, “will be delivered as promised.”

Everything about this is one more move in one more game, and you shouldn’t care as much as you do about who takes victory. Still, you lower your cane and lean forward, tasting the air. The burgundy you caught on her could be anyone, but she knows you know it’s not.

A good agent deserves a bonus, you think. An acknowledgment of her hard work.

“I didn’t know Aradia was in port,” you say.

You can taste her blush from where you’re sitting, bright blue beneath charcoal grey, bitter and so, so sweet.


	19. Formal wear, Feferi<3<Kanaya

Feferi’s coronation finery was scorched armor and the blood of her Ancestor, and it earned her enough respect from the old guard to ease the regime change, but Kanaya claims never to have forgiven her. Tonight’s occasion is different. More formal. With luck, less violent, though the assassins are proving finnoyingly perchfishtant. And what that means, it seems, is that she has the opportunity to redeem herself in the eyes of fashion.

Her gown is of Kanaya’s making – rich cloth of simple cut, in ocean hues of blue-grey-green. No colors for an Empress, but there are messages she means to send, and one of them, though not the only one, is that she will not be constrained by what was done before. As for the other – two gemstones gleam red and blue in her ears, and her girdle holds others in every color of the spectrum. Kanaya fits it about her waist with pursed lips, her hands lingering as she adjusts the fall of fabric; her claws are light on Feferi’s waist, careful with the gown but close enough for the reminder of sharpness.

“While I share your politics,” she says, close against Feferi’s ear, “it would be nice if I could convince you to express them in ways that do not clash.”

“You say that,” Feferi says, “boat all I can hear is that you’d prefer something with more jade.”

“You cannot deny that it would suit this fabric far better.”

“I seappose you’re right,” she says, but Kanaya doesn’t dig her teeth into the promise of victory. Her eyebrows lift minutely. She’s clearly waiting for something vexing.

 _She’s learned well_ , Feferi thinks, and leans back with a grin, resting her head on Kanaya’s shoulder.

“After the diplomaterrorists are gone,” she murmurs, “I might permit you to correct the oversight.”

“Ah,” Kanaya says. She grips Feferi’s hair with enough strength to hurt, and enough care not to disarray the strands of pearls she’d placed there. Her mouth closes over Feferi’s throat.

“If that is to be the case,” she says, her voice an almost imperceptible vibration, “perhaps I should offer you an inducement as well.”

And then her fangs sink down, small and precise and piercing. She sways forward, moving automatically, then steps back. There isn’t time for more. 

After that, one last touch: a golden choker. Kanaya clasps it around her throat, where it rests heavy. It will hide the bite, but she’ll carry the sting with her until she returns.


	20. Shower sex, Folykl/Marsti

It’s easier to breathe in here.

The city outside is cold and open, with a sky full of drones, and you’ve gotten used to finding refuge in small spaces – first your earliest alleyway hiding spots, then Kuprum’s arms, and now Marsti’s ablution trap, too. She pulls you into it with her, turns the hot water up until the ache in your chest loosens, and for a while your entire world is made up of heat and steam, her low-burning energy behind you and the feeling of her working shampoo into your hair with both hands. The stuff she likes doesn’t smell like fresh sea breezes or delicate dim season blossoms or whatever, just something clean and slightly herbal, and she hums a little as she rubs circles into your scalp. It’s nice. You never used to think it could be, but it is.

“We should break into some highblood’s hive sometime,” you say idly. “Make use of the facilities.”

You’ve done that before, mainly because Kuprum wanted to see if he could hack the security systems and the answer was an easy, _easy_ yes. In addition to all the other rich people shit that nobody needs, some of those places have ablution traps as big as Marsti’s entire hive. Basically infinite hot water, blasted at varying speeds from gentle massage to skin abrasion. Bubble jets. Fancy soaps. You know she dreams about that kind of shit. Sometimes you do too, these days, and that’s probably some kind of victory on her part, but it’s hard to care too much about letting her win when she was never your enemy to begin with.

“I’m not going to do that,” she says.

“It could get you killed.”

“Are you seriously presenting that to me as a point in this plan’s favor?”

You just let that hang there for a second, fading back into the constant sound of falling water, until she makes some tired sound that’s half a laugh and half a sigh.

“I’m not _that_ reckless,” she says. “I just...”

“Yeah,” you say. She doesn’t want to die. You know that about her now. She wants to live, and there’s a limit to how much the world will let her. Not a lot you can do about that, but you know what it’s like, and sometimes that’s the closest anyone can get to good enough.

“But think about it,” you say. “You. Me. The detachable water expulsion device. The looming threat of some clown coming back to cull us both.”

“True romance,” she murmurs, and then she is laughing. Her hands leave your hair, and she pulls you backwards, gloves trailing soap suds over your abdomen as she bends low and says, “Do you have any idea how much I want to pin you up against a wall right now?”

“It’s kinda obvious, yeah,” you say. Her apron isn’t heavy enough to hide a lot, especially when you lean back against her and she shifts forward, close enough for you to feel her bulge moving against your lower back. There’s not going to be any wall-pinning tonight, because she’s tired from work and you’re tired from being alive, but that doesn’t mean there has to be nothing.

“Keep washing my hair,” you tell her.

“I hadn’t planned on stopping,” she says, though she doesn’t let you go just yet and you don’t exactly mind. You turn in her arms, careful not to brush against her bare skin for too long, then pull back far enough to sneak a hand beneath that apron and wrap your fingers around her bulge. The shock of energy as you make contact is good; the slick weight of her in your palm is better. She’s intensely warm, and soft where you’re gripping her, and you have to be careful – you _know_ you have to be careful, and you can, and you will – but that little _hah_ sound she makes as she rocks into your hand gets you right in the acid tract, and you don’t want to let her go. You can feel the beat of her bloodpusher in her chest when you rest your head against it, and in the coiling length of her bulge as it twines and tightens around your fingers, all part of the same too-vulnerable system. You and Kuprum are good at getting your claws into vulnerabilities, prising them open, taking what you want or what you need for survival; being trusted around anything so fragile still feels new.

Slowly, her breath gone tight and shaky, Marsti lifts her hands again to scrub them through your dripping hair. She digs her grasp-nubs into it, combing through the tangles in a way that somehow manages to feel good instead of hurting like a motherfucker. You’d bet her eyes are closed right now, that she’s moving mostly on automatic, but you’re also willing to bet that she can still get you clean and you can get her off before the hot water runs out or you take too much from her to keep going. Not as risky as clown roulette, but close enough, good enough for you to feel safe and her to feel all the way alive. You know how much she can handle. It’s more than this. You grin a little and shift your grip, twist and stroke, and Marsti’s hips twitch forward, following the motion of your hand. Her voice rises in a cut-off moan, echoing off the walls of the ablution trap and filling the space with her presence – but it was her space already, and tired though you are, the thought of that sends a flood of heat right through you. She didn’t have to welcome you into it, but she did, no hacking required. You don’t have to hide here, but you can. 

You tip your head back to meet her touch, and everything recedes into running water and blurred energy except for the sound of her breath as it catches – releases – continues in unsteady, unabated rhythm.


End file.
